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This chapter explores the need of the newly formed union to establish a functioning republic and how this affected Native American Indian tribal sovereignty. It examines how the Constitutional Convention of 1787 rethought the structure of the federal government in relation to states, which includes the Indian tribes. This chapter also looks at how the newly formed Constitution affected tribal sovereignty and India law. It discusses the Iroquois Confederacy which adopted rules of governance in what became known as the Haudenosaunee Constitution, or the Great Law of Peace.

This chapter examines the early contact between European settlers and the Native American Indian tribes, and how these encounters played a role in establishing the foundation and early development of Indian law and sovereignty. It enumerates the general legal and policy rationales that brought the Europeans into North America in the first place: papal edict, first discovery, sustained possession, voluntary self-subjection of native people, and armed conquest. It discusses the role of commerce and trade in colonization. It also compares the idea of ownership between the two communities and how this led to conflict. Additionally, the chapter describes how the Articles of Confederation of the colonies further strained relations with the tribes.

This chapter analyzes the following cases: Johnson v. McIntosh, Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, and Worcester v. Georgia. It examines how they established some of the basic principles of Indian law and their enduring legacy and challenges to the modern application of Indian law. It focuses on the issue of land acquisition and how this affects Indian tribal territory and sovereignty. It also discusses the role of cartography and translation in the possibility of harming and dispossessing indigenous people by comparing the situation of the Indian tribes to Ireland and the Middle East, both lands with indigenous people who were powerfully attached to landscape.

This introductory chapter briefly discusses the interactions between the Native American Indian tribes and the United States of America. It analyzes these encounters through the lens of four primary themes: commerce and land acquisition, diplomacy and war, cultural difference, and physical separation. The chapter also looks at how the United States Congress reacted to this increased cooperation by enacting laws to recognize tribal sovereignty, and how it disregarded this through the judiciary by citing landmark cases such as Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock. In addition, this chapter examines the role of past historical events in Indian law and affairs concerning the issue of tribal sovereignty, and looks into how these could help present matters.

This chapter concludes with an analysis of Martin Heidegger, Jan Patocka, and Václav Havel's exhortations on actively envisioning and embracing a world without advanced technology. Indulging in the many pleasures of the great outdoors, the chapter also examines how nature and “the natural” give a different sort of bodily knowledge of who people are. It talks about “Indian camps” that mimic the heavily romanticized and fictionalized lifeways of Native American tribes to the industriousness of a relaxing visit to the familial “chata” or country cottage. It also talks about Czechs in their outdoor pursuits and questions whether the realities of living close to nature can indeed transport people to a deeper understanding of what it is be alive. The chapter explores the possibilities and limits of the acts of beauty and violence, dissolution and transcendence that make up everyday living.